VISTA Gardens raises seedlings for gardeners to transplant in their raised garden beds at VISTA on March 1.
Order your seedlings by January 15
Broccoli and Broccolini
Aspabroc
Sprouting Variety
Known as Broccolini in the produce section of your grocery store and on restaurant menus, resembles a broccoli raab with an asparagus stem, with a mild taste. Easy-to-grow. After first maturity of the central shoots, plants will set 3 to 5 shoots shortly thereafter and continue for about 4 weeks in mild weather.
Burgundy
Sprouting Variety
This stunning sprouting broccoli has beautiful purple buds and purple-green stems. Easy to harvest because of concentrated side-shoot production and tall, strong plants. Slender stems with few leaves make for easy bunching. Pinching recommended.
Piracicaba Brazilian Sprouting
Sprouting Variety
A non-heading broccoli, this plant is large, productive, heat and cold tolerant. Harvest the flower shoots stem and all, and it will continue to produce more. Named for Piracicaba, Brazil, where it was developed, this broccoli has a mild and sweet flavor and is quite tender, even raw.
Marathon
Central Head Variety
Traditional variety with familiar heavy heads of broccoli best to grow later in the season. Transplant this one in October! Intermediate resistance to downy mildew and highly tolerant to cold. If it freezes this winter, this broccoli will taste sweeter. After harvesting the central head, gardeners can continually harvest smaller side shoots for salad, stir fry, smoothie and side dishes.
Cauliflower
Snowball
Large Head Variety
Self-wrapping leaves protect the delicious 6-8" white heads from sunlight, so this variety self-blanches.
Collards
Georgia Southern
Georgia Type
Non-heading plants grow 2-3 feet tall with large cabbage-like blue-green leaves that are tender, mild, and juicy. Historic collard first released around 1880. Slow to bolt and tolerant of heat and cold.
Flash F1
Hybrid Type
Very slow to bolt, Flash offers repeated harvests of dark green, smooth leaves and is very high yielding.
Eggplant
Black Beauty
American Variety
An heirloom variety, it bears classically shaped, glossy, purple-black fruits that are delicious grilled, baked, and in stir-fries. Plants produce 4 to 6 large fruit, or more if kept harvested and well watered.
Diamond
Italian Variety
These dark purple beauties with green tinted flesh are slender, 9 inches by 3 inches in diameter. Deep eggplant flavor, texture, firm flesh, and rarely bitter. The fruits are borne in clusters of 4-6 on two-foot tall plants, are disease-resistant, and rarely bitter.
Icicle
Italian Variety
This All-America Selections (AAS) Winner in 2022 bears cylindrical 7 inches long fruit uniform in size that typically weigh 7.7 ounces. The fruits stay pure white, without yellowing and have improved texture and flavor. Resistant to inset and environmental damage and tolerant of heat.
Kale
Nero Di Toscana
This very tender and juicy variety is called palm kale because the plant looks just like a little palm tree. It is also known as dinosaur, Lacinato or Tuscan kale. A hardy, non-heading variety that produces juicy, very tender and delicious dark green leaves. Harvest young for best flavor.
Dwarf Blue Curled
Heavily crinkled leaves make fine kale chips and hold up well after harvest. 12-14" high plants with a wide spread of plumage. Slow to bolt, cold hardy & overwinters well.
Grows best in well-drained soil with compost and available nutrients like nitrogen. Add compost to ensure that the seedlings will have food immediately available to them once transplanted. Avoid planting where any member of the cabbage family grew the year before.
Pepper
California Wonder
Sweet
Vigorous, disease resistant, heavy bearing plant with thick-walled 4 inches tall and wide fruit, with a crisp, mild flavor and terrific sweetness. They mature from green to red on the plant, and are ideal for stuffing, slicing into rings for dips and salad toppings, and chopping into crisp bite-sized nibbles.
Golden California Wonder
Sweet
A California blonde bell pepper. Very sweet thick fleshed bell peppers ripen from green to golden-yellow to deep orange. Plants grow 24-30" with 4" diameter fruit. Harvest in 62-73 days from transplant.
Early Jalapeño
Hot
Cone-shaped, thick-walled fruit, 3 to 4 inches long and about 1½ inches wide, borne in great numbers on very vigorous plants. They are ready to pick when dark green, delivering a wallop of pure heat.
Sweet Banana
Sweet
Prolific Italian variety prized for its gigantic sweet red fruits. Delicious 12" long 3” across (at shoulders) peppers are ideal for stir-fry, grilling and enjoying raw in salads. An early variety known for its high yields.
Named for its banana-like shape, this variety bears sweet, mild banana peppers that mature from yellow, to orange, and then to crimson red. Plants fruit prolifically, easily producing up to 25 to 30 pods per plant. Banana peppers are great for frying and pickling.
Tomato
Sunpeach
Small Fruit
Sunpeach (sister variety to Sun Gold, is less tangy & acidic as its famous orange relative, but is very sweet with excellent flavor.) Deep pink, shiny, 15-20 gm., fruit are borne on long trusses.
Marglobe
Medium Fruit
This strain has been selected for disease resistance. Red, medium-sized, 5-8 oz. fruits with firm walls and good flavor. Stocky, vigorous plants with excellent disease tolerance. Vines provide good protection from sunscald.
Sunset Torch
Small Fruit
2022 All-American Selections (AAS) Winner sets small "perfect" flowers followed by uniform 2-inch plum-shaped fruits, weighing about 1 ounce each, having a moderately firm texture. A mildly sweet, fruity flavor makes for particularly good for snacking.
Roma VF
Medium Fruit
Plum to round shape, thick walled, red 4-6 oz medium-sized fruit popular (paste type) for canning, sauce, juice or drying. Heavy producer.
Tropic VFN
Large Fruit
Developed by the University of Florida, this exceptionally disease-resistant variety produces sweet-flavored fruit averaging 8-9 oz that is thick-walled and tends to sit high on the vine under a protective cover of foliage. Recommended highly for hot, humid, disease-prone areas, especially where blight is a problem.
Transplant Dates:
March 1
*Dates may shift somewhat, based on weather conditions, storm interruptions, etc. Watch for updates in VISTA Matters and related email blasts.